Nosferatu, a Symphony of Terror
(Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens)
Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
- 1922
- Germany
- Fantasy
- 1h34mn
- Mute
- Black and white
Brand new master
Young notary clerk Thomas Hutter travels to Transylvania to allow Count Orlock to purchase a residence in Wisborg. The count sees a miniature portrait of Ellen, Hutter’s young wife, and aims to conquer her using his evil powers…
A free adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula - so free that producer Albin Grau omitted to buy the rights for the novel, thus putting the film’s existence in peril - Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror became a seminal work in cinema history, less inspired by the markers of the vampire tale, but rather on a parallel course, existing totally independently from its model. The virtuoso directing of F. W. Murnau, the prow figure of German expressionism, exemplifies the movement’s aesthetics, by making the conflict between shadows and light, a graphic doubling of the manichean struggle, the film’s true narrative and dramatic thread. Max Schreck, an actor turned myth thanks to his incarnation of romantic vampirism, and who fueled many legends and rumors because of his disturbing strangeness, subsequently entered cinema anthologies. An object of cinephilic fantasies (E. Elias Merhige’s Shadow of the Vampire in 2000), and of fascination for bold filmmakers aiming to pierce its mysteries by picking up its story line (from Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre in 1979 to the soon to be released new version of the myth by Robert Eggers), Murnau’s Nosferatu is part of the few pivotal works that mark the history of cinema. Its rediscovery on the big screen in a cine-concert will no doubt allow to extract its deep romantic essence and to shudder before its profound toxic beauty.
Screenings
15/09 • 17h45 • Screen 500
Screening presented and accompanied on piano by Serge Bromberg, and on percussions by Aidje Tafial.
Credits
- With : Max Schreck, Gustav von Wanderheim, Alexander Granach, Greta Schröder...
- Screenplay : Henrik Galeen
- Photography : Fritz Arno Wagner
- Production : Enrico Dieckmann, Albin Grau
